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Topic: Tom Williams ~ The Smoking Gun(s) or Phin's Pholly - page 3. (Read 16319 times)

legendary
Activity: 1918
Merit: 1570
Bitcoin: An Idea Worth Spending
Nite, all. Time to Nap, Purr & Rest.
legendary
Activity: 1918
Merit: 1570
Bitcoin: An Idea Worth Spending
This reporter also was aware of Plato's trip across the US and didn't know about mybitcoin.com. Maybe it's only odd to me. If I was a reporter, which I'm not, my first question would be, "How is he going to pay for stuff?"

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It’s been four days since I posted on the Bitcoin forums, announcing my plan to cross the US with only Bitcoins. It looks like I’ve got enough support to get to Florida already - thanks guys! I need more gas nodes between Florida and LA, so if you’re willing to sell me gas for bitcoins (or donate some for free), drop a pin on my map. I also set up a Couchsurfing profile - feel free to contact me on there if you’re interested in hosting me.

How do I buy something with Bitcoins from someone who has never heard of them?Clearly, the average Joe isn’t going to download the client and blockchain while I talk to them. Instead, I’m going to create preloaded mybitcoin.com accounts with varied denominations, and write the credentials on cards. Assuming I can convince the seller that I’m not trying to scam them, they can accept the cards for value.

To what reporter do you refer?

I'm not gonna fall for the banana in the tailpipe trick. Let's just say that maybe I posted a link on this board a couple or so days ago. I can't believe all the PM's I've recieved to date.
sr. member
Activity: 490
Merit: 250
This reporter also was aware of Plato's trip across the US and didn't know about mybitcoin.com. Maybe it's only odd to me. If I was a reporter, which I'm not, my first question would be, "How is he going to pay for stuff?"

Quote
It’s been four days since I posted on the Bitcoin forums, announcing my plan to cross the US with only Bitcoins. It looks like I’ve got enough support to get to Florida already - thanks guys! I need more gas nodes between Florida and LA, so if you’re willing to sell me gas for bitcoins (or donate some for free), drop a pin on my map. I also set up a Couchsurfing profile - feel free to contact me on there if you’re interested in hosting me.

How do I buy something with Bitcoins from someone who has never heard of them?Clearly, the average Joe isn’t going to download the client and blockchain while I talk to them. Instead, I’m going to create preloaded mybitcoin.com accounts with varied denominations, and write the credentials on cards. Assuming I can convince the seller that I’m not trying to scam them, they can accept the cards for value.

To what reporter do you refer?
legendary
Activity: 1918
Merit: 1570
Bitcoin: An Idea Worth Spending
This reporter also was aware of Plato's trip across the US and didn't know about mybitcoin.com. Maybe it's only odd to me. If I was a reporter, which I'm not, my first question would be, "How is he going to pay for stuff?"

Quote
It’s been four days since I posted on the Bitcoin forums, announcing my plan to cross the US with only Bitcoins. It looks like I’ve got enough support to get to Florida already - thanks guys! I need more gas nodes between Florida and LA, so if you’re willing to sell me gas for bitcoins (or donate some for free), drop a pin on my map. I also set up a Couchsurfing profile - feel free to contact me on there if you’re interested in hosting me.

How do I buy something with Bitcoins from someone who has never heard of them?Clearly, the average Joe isn’t going to download the client and blockchain while I talk to them. Instead, I’m going to create preloaded mybitcoin.com accounts with varied denominations, and write the credentials on cards. Assuming I can convince the seller that I’m not trying to scam them, they can accept the cards for value.
legendary
Activity: 1918
Merit: 1570
Bitcoin: An Idea Worth Spending
Plus, took a month preparing the Bitcoin piece, and still didn't know who Bruce Wagner was. Does anybody else, besides me, find this odd? (and was a member of Mt.Gox at the time)
member
Activity: 98
Merit: 10
Did you steal my pronouns, too?

Yeah, sorry about that. I must have been playing too much Grand Theft Auto lately.
legendary
Activity: 1918
Merit: 1570
Bitcoin: An Idea Worth Spending
Is it possible for a well seasoned reporter to NOT: Know who Bruce Wagner is; Know about mybitcoin.com; Read this forum; etc.--all prior to June 13, 2011 (20K+ joined after this person became a member), yet was crafting a Bitcoin story?

Sure. Well-seasoned reporters spew inaccurate garbage about subjects they know nothing about all the time. Sometimes they even decide what they want their story to say before they begin doing research for it. Many reporters have both journalistic integrity and competence, but there are enough of them who lack one or both that you can't take it for granted that any particular reporter knows what they are talking about.

I was wondering who stole my hyphen. Nice catch!

Bias! This person knows their shit otherwise would not be in the position this person is in.

Did you steal my pronouns, too?
member
Activity: 98
Merit: 10
Quote
This topic needs more eyes.

If memory serves me correctly, back then (prior to June 13, 2011) bitcoin.org linked to this forum on its homepage. So I ask again, how is it that a well seasoned reporter didn't read this forum, therefore not knowing about mybitcoin.com or Bruce Wagner? When I first starting reading this forum, I knew about both and I'm not a reporter.



Incompetence and/or bias?
member
Activity: 98
Merit: 10
Is it possible for a well seasoned reporter to NOT: Know who Bruce Wagner is; Know about mybitcoin.com; Read this forum; etc.--all prior to June 13, 2011 (20K+ joined after this person became a member), yet was crafting a Bitcoin story?

Sure. Well-seasoned reporters spew inaccurate garbage about subjects they know nothing about all the time. Sometimes they even decide what they want their story to say before they begin doing research for it. Many reporters have both journalistic integrity and competence, but there are enough of them who lack one or both that you can't take it for granted that any particular reporter knows what they are talking about.
legendary
Activity: 1918
Merit: 1570
Bitcoin: An Idea Worth Spending
Quote
This topic needs more eyes.

If memory serves me correctly, back then (prior to June 13, 2011) bitcoin.org linked to this forum on its homepage. So I ask again, how is it that a well seasoned reporter didn't read this forum, therefore not knowing about mybitcoin.com or Bruce Wagner? When I first starting reading this forum, I knew about both and I'm not a reporter.

legendary
Activity: 1918
Merit: 1570
Bitcoin: An Idea Worth Spending
No way will I be posting emails anymore. Thank you, freequant, for bringing that to my attention.

If I'm going to continue pursuing this issue, I feel I should do it with a different approach. I'll start by asking a simple question, then move forward from there. Let's see how this works out.

After reading the quote below gleaned from this post https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.490970, my Huxley Hat started picking up signals--again.

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I find even more strange his story in The Bitcoin Show about how he told to his *friends* one evening that he wanted to withdraw his funds, only to find out the next day that MyBitcoin had gone offline without any explanation

Is it possible for a well seasoned reporter to NOT: Know who Bruce Wagner is; Know about mybitcoin.com; Read this forum; etc.--all prior to June 13, 2011 (20K+ joined after this person became a member), yet was crafting a Bitcoin story?
legendary
Activity: 1918
Merit: 1570
Bitcoin: An Idea Worth Spending
Phinnaeus,

10 pages to this thread, many people and email addresses dragged in the mud and still no shadow of any evidence.
10 pages of wishful thinking and what-ifs tossed at random...

So far, I refrained from commenting on that because I wanted to let you the time to recollect your "dicovery of last night". But the more this thread unfolds, the more it feels like you are just thinking aloud.

I am glad someone is investigating, and I don't want to discourage you.
But please considere posting when you are sure that you have really got something.


No argument here. 100% on point. The next quote by BitcoinPorn just about expresses my sentiment completely.


I am glad someone is investigating, and I don't want to discourage you.
But please considere posting when you are sure that you have really got something.

To be fair, I think he writing indicated as such, that these are all things he is kind of putting together himself.  And who knows, hopefully there was a path in his little journey that may spark someone else to do a little investigating as well.   
hero member
Activity: 630
Merit: 500
Posts: 69
I am glad someone is investigating, and I don't want to discourage you.
But please considere posting when you are sure that you have really got something.

To be fair, I think he writing indicated as such, that these are all things he is kind of putting together himself.  And who knows, hopefully there was a path in his little journey that may spark someone else to do a little investigating as well.   
hero member
Activity: 770
Merit: 500
Phinnaeus,

10 pages to this thread, many people and email addresses dragged in the mud and still no shadow of any evidence.
10 pages of wishful thinking and what-ifs tossed at random...

So far, I refrained from commenting on that because I wanted to let you the time to recollect your "dicovery of last night". But the more this thread unfolds, the more it feels like you are just thinking aloud.

I am glad someone is investigating, and I don't want to discourage you.
But please considere posting when you are sure that you have really got something.
legendary
Activity: 1918
Merit: 1570
Bitcoin: An Idea Worth Spending
Prior to joining this forum, I spent no less than 12 hours reading the posts here. It was discussions like the previous few posts on this thread, and others like it, peppered throughout, that tipped me into joining. One of my early posts starts this sentiment as well. It wasn't long after joining that I saw a change in what was posted. Of course the time frame--forward of me joining (June 16)--must be taken into consideration, for a lot has happened within the past couple months. Even prior to me joining, I read some negative aspects of Bitcoin, but felt those concerns will be addressed in due time. To this day, Bitcoin still has issues, but I know that people more intelligent than I are working overtime to get them resolved so that Bitcoin can move more forward into the mainstream. I'm not a miner, nor a coder, nor a major mover/shaker, but I feel that what little I do bring to this banquet hopefully aids Bitcoin's progression.

Bruno
legendary
Activity: 1764
Merit: 1002
Regarding the salting: The salt adds an additional pseudorandom element into the password prior to hashing. Without it, two identical plaintext passwords would show up in the password file with identical hashes. Once you crack one of them, you've cracked both of them. With the salt, the two identical plaintext passwords are likely to produce different salted hashes in the password file. Even though they both have the same plaintext password, cracking one doesn't trivially tell you that you've also cracked the other one. So, you need to go to all of the same work to crack each instance of that same password. I think the salting also makes rainbow tables impractical, but I'm no expert on this stuff.

It makes them much less useful for uninformed attacks especially.

If I happened to know in advance that the salt for the admin account was 12345, I can use a rainbow table prepared with that salt. But that table would only get me into one account. Knowing the salt in advance isn't something that happens frequently, though, so if I want to get rainbow tables, assuming a 2 byte salt I'd need 65,536 of them instead of just 1. And that leaves out the fact that the salt could be prepended _OR_ appended to the password, the hostname could be stuck on there as well, etc... I've seen a lot of extra stuff added into a password before hashing. Getting rainbow tables for those things already generated is harder.

so when i enter my password into mtgox, their DB appends a memorized salt that was created when i first generated my password and then hashes the concatenation using the same hash algorithm (currently SHA-512) to create a hash result that is the same as the hash stored in their system?
member
Activity: 112
Merit: 10
Regarding the salting: The salt adds an additional pseudorandom element into the password prior to hashing. Without it, two identical plaintext passwords would show up in the password file with identical hashes. Once you crack one of them, you've cracked both of them. With the salt, the two identical plaintext passwords are likely to produce different salted hashes in the password file. Even though they both have the same plaintext password, cracking one doesn't trivially tell you that you've also cracked the other one. So, you need to go to all of the same work to crack each instance of that same password. I think the salting also makes rainbow tables impractical, but I'm no expert on this stuff.

It makes them much less useful for uninformed attacks especially.

If I happened to know in advance that the salt for the admin account was 12345, I can use a rainbow table prepared with that salt. But that table would only get me into one account. Knowing the salt in advance isn't something that happens frequently, though, so if I want to get rainbow tables, assuming a 2 byte salt I'd need 65,536 of them instead of just 1. And that leaves out the fact that the salt could be prepended _OR_ appended to the password, the hostname could be stuck on there as well, etc... I've seen a lot of extra stuff added into a password before hashing. Getting rainbow tables for those things already generated is harder.
hero member
Activity: 504
Merit: 500
Now with the mybitcoin thing I can't help but feel, after listening to Hero's input that it sounds almost like some breaches started to become noticed and got out of hand before the orginal devs could do much about it. It seems like they were scared off by something and pretty much abandoned ship, leaving someone to deal with it pretty much on their own. Just my take on it now.

From that show it does sound that there is a lot of private information on mybitcoin.com that is being hidden to protect people. I always thought it strange that a site that started when bitcoin was a small (tiny) community could be completely anonymous. With so much freelance detective work evident, I wonder if that small community would be willing to make more information public to brute force this problem with the human based computing it seems is available here and at SA.

ayeeee, my sentiments exactly. Them, combined with admins here and Gox should have more than enough info to come to some sort of conclusion. Which begs the question, 'Are people genuinely concerned for their safety?'.
sr. member
Activity: 490
Merit: 250
Now with the mybitcoin thing I can't help but feel, after listening to Hero's input that it sounds almost like some breaches started to become noticed and got out of hand before the orginal devs could do much about it. It seems like they were scared off by something and pretty much abandoned ship, leaving someone to deal with it pretty much on their own. Just my take on it now.

From that show it does sound that there is a lot of private information on mybitcoin.com that is being hidden to protect people. I always thought it strange that a site that started when bitcoin was a small (tiny) community could be completely anonymous. With so much freelance detective work evident, I wonder if that small community would be willing to make more information public to brute force this problem with the human based computing it seems is available here and at SA.
hero member
Activity: 504
Merit: 500
Stupidest thing I've heard in my entire life. How crazy do you think I am?

At least as crazy as I am stupid.  Tongue

Regarding the salting: The salt adds an additional pseudorandom element into the password prior to hashing. Without it, two identical plaintext passwords would show up in the password file with identical hashes. Once you crack one of them, you've cracked both of them. With the salt, the two identical plaintext passwords are likely to produce different salted hashes in the password file. Even though they both have the same plaintext password, cracking one doesn't trivially tell you that you've also cracked the other one. So, you need to go to all of the same work to crack each instance of that same password. I think the salting also makes rainbow tables impractical, but I'm no expert on this stuff.


 Aye, pretty much and it makes bruting with dictionaries about useless because of the differing hash result. You'd need to have the exact same salt that was used at the time the pwd was created for each pwd in order for your hashed pwds to match up.(newer cracking efforts can handle this too but it requires a lot more computing cycles for all the extra attempts at each hash)  Further if the tables are shadowed in some form it makes it much, much more difficult to leech the entire password table as you will only find the references to each one and not a complete build of the table. This is all old school crap though. Even though the concept hasn't changed much there are much more secure methods available to store and check user created passwords beyond just salting.
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